I met Xiaodong in the summer of 1980, when I had just finished my twenty-one years on the Qinghai Plateau and was transferred back to the ** Academy of Fine Arts to teach in the third studio of the oil painting department. Xiaodong was a young teacher who graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts and was sent to ** Academy of Fine Arts for further study. When he entered the first advanced course held by the Department of Oil Painting after the end of the Cultural Revolution, there were 15 students from all over the world who came at the same time, and they were divided into various studios, and Xiaodong happened to be in the third studio, so he became acquainted with me. In addition to classes, "Xiaodong often came to my small bungalow residence in the north of the U-shaped building of the old ** Academy of Fine Arts, and brought his works from the time he studied at the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, most of which were oil painting landscapes, and most of them were the scenery of the Loess Plateau. His diligence and diligence, as well as his love for landscape painting, also convey his sensitivity to color lyricism, so there is both simplicity and agility in his paintings.
Tibetan Old Grandma, 1997, oil on canvas, 81x100cm (selected for the "New Eurasian Land Bridge Art Exhibition" and won the third prize).
Pastoral Return, 1996, Oil on canvas, 894 130cm, in 1996, he was invited by the Hong Kong International Academy of Fine Arts to hold the "Pan Xiaodong and Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts Professor Oil Painting Exhibition" in Hong Kong
During his studies in Beijing, Xiao Dong was very inquisitive and could see many original sketches and oil paintings by first-rate masters. Especially after 1980, during the reform and opening up, cultural exchanges also increased frequently, and foreign exhibitions came one after another, such as the French 19th century rural landscape exhibition, the German expressionist painting exhibition, etc. This undoubtedly broadened his horizons and gradually realized that artistic expression had more room for development. In the teaching of the ** Academy of Fine Arts, we have always followed Mr. Xu Beihong's motto of "being subtle and vast", and adhered to it as a tradition. Therefore, in my teaching, he absorbed the rigor and completeness of my almost demanding image modeling, and through continuous study and practice, his foundation was further strengthened, and his valuable understanding was also retained and stimulated. He made full use of the precious time of the year to copy many excellent masterpieces, often spent weekends in the library, and took advantage of holidays to go to the Forbidden City, Yuanmingyuan, and Tiananmen Square to sketch. Thinking in practice and constantly exploring one's own artistic language in thinking. God rewards hard work, who can be fruitless? In the past year, Xiaodong has achieved qualitative improvement from the modeling foundation of oil painting art to artistic expression, from the change of techniques to theoretical research, laying the foundation of his artistic road in the spring and autumn period of the next 30 years, and has matured and stepped to the next level.
Deep Valley, 1994, Oil on canvas, 81 100cm (selected for the "Second National Teachers' Excellent Art Exhibition" and won the Excellence Award).
Under the Grape Trellis, 1994, Oil on canvas, 81, 100cm (1996 Hong Kong exhibition).
The theme of the "Ancient Plateau" series, which was released in 1989, is, of course, this piece of yellow land that nurtured him. Although the picture is not large, as small as a foot and a half, it is full of the richness and heaviness of the countryside, but it is full of the poetry of the Qin and Han dynasties, and it is lyrical. It is very different from the past when I was confined to expressive landscape creation. The expressive landscape creation, which gradually changed to freehand and emotional, clearly marked his artistic pursuit—landscape oil painting with the spirit of traditional Chinese painting. "Learning from nature, rewriting nature" has become his motto. In this series of creations, we can get a glimpse of the people in this birthplace of Chinese culture, the understanding of survival and the meaning of life, the hope and pursuit of life and nature, and his paintings fully reflect the strong will to survive and desire for green vitality of the people of the Loess Plateau. From the faint twilight of autumn or the warm sun of winter, all of them reflect the keen observation of an excellent painter, and at the same time, it also implies his deep thoughts and worries about the continuous destruction of nature and the global human ecological environment. These constitute the overall spiritual grasp of a painter's creation, making it more humanistic in connotation.
Plugged on the Dawn of the Moon, 1991, 41, 606cm (selected "93..)China Oil Painting Annual Exhibition", "The Fourth Exhibition of New Artists and New Works of China Artists Association", published in Fine Arts
Under the Poplar Tree, 1990, Oil on canvas, 90 130cm (Selected for the 8th National Art Exhibition, won the Shaanxi Provincial Award).
Pan Xiaodong's understanding is that the painter uses his own unique way of thinking and creative methods to dialogue with each other when facing the nature of the west, that is, the people living on the loess have an endless spiritual dialogue with each other, as well as between them and nature, whether it is a path, a cave, a spring snow, a loess slope, a new willow ......The infinite colors of life and the changeable forms of nature are all born under his pen. It seems unremarkable, but it is full of eternal moving power. He integrates the human spirit he feels into his own artistic context. What is particularly noteworthy is that he has maintained an inexhaustible artistic sensitivity and unremitting pursuit of a sense of art form through variety, creative and exploratory sketching. For example, this year's (2010) Tianshui Qinling West is an example of how he is more interested in turning the meaning of spring into plain tones while using dynamic and powerful brushstrokes. In the painting entitled "Green Fields", the clouds floating in the sky and the yellow rape flowers swaying along the slope of the land are isomorphic and harmonious, which are fully expressed in the writing of clouds and water.
West of the Qinling Mountains - Green Field, 2010, Oil on canvas, 61, 61cm
Lonely City in the Desert, 1990, Oil on canvas, 50, 65cm (1991, Zhejiang Chinese Oil Painting Exhibition Award).
Under the Cool Mountain, oil on canvas, 1992, 81, 116cm, collected by the China Artists Association, published in Fine Arts
Rewriting Nature" - in the past two years, Pan Xiaodong's thinking on how to recreate nature and form his own artistic realm has gradually become clear through creation. There are two overviews: one is to absorb the essence of traditional painting (focusing on landscape painting) from its spirit and expression, and to store the thousands of rich objects and images visually observed in the library of one's own memory, so as to be ready to dispatch and use at any time, so as to cut down the complex and simplify, highlight and enlarge the true image language in the painting. Second, when completing the creation, we strive to retain the vivid and sparkling "traces" in the process of creation, which is the most subtle, precious and moving part of art. Both of these can be seen in a growing number of Xiaodong's works, so I was not surprised to hear that in recent years he has been painting oil paintings as well as many ink paintings. This is the indispensable spiritual nourishment of every Chinese artist - traditional Chinese art is the cultural root on which we live, and only from this point can we create and open up an independent and unique context of Chinese oil painting. I think that Xiaodong is constantly achieving such a goal, in order to have a stronger mind, in the increasingly busy teaching and official duties, firmly stand on the yellow earth, feel the mountains and rivers, concentrate on the pen and ink Danqing, and when climbing to the peaks of the layers, we should firmly believe: "The mountains are not high, there is a heart, there is a spirit". (Written by Zhu Naizheng).
Xiangyun, 1999, 114 162cm (Selected for the 9th National Art Exhibition, won the Shaanxi Provincial Award, 2016 National Art Museum of China National Unity Painting Exhibition).
Qiu Yan, 2000, 81 100cm oil painting (selected for the "Shaanxi University Celebration of the 80th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China" Teachers and Students Exhibition, won the special prize).
Loess Plateau, oil on canvas, 1998, 894 130cm (selected for the "National Yan'an Song Art Exhibition" won the second prize).
Evening Shine, 1999, Oil on canvas, 38, 46cm (Selected for "Research and Transcendence: Chinese Small Oil Painting Exhibition" in 2001).
Longdong Zhengyue, 2003, 81, 100cm (Selected for the 3rd China Oil Painting Exhibition).
New Year in a Small Town, 2004, Oil on canvas, 170 150cm (Selected for the 10th National Art Exhibition, won the Shaanxi Provincial Award).
Spring in Northern Shaanxi, 2004, 114x146cm, and other works participated in the "Endless Rivers and Mountains: North and South Oil Painting Invitational Exhibition" and "My Land and My People - Northwest Oil Painting Exhibition" held by the National Art Museum of China
New Year No. 2 in a Small Town, 2006, Oil on canvas, 170 150cm (selected for the "Peasants, Peasants" exhibition and "My Land and My People-Northwest Oil Painting Exhibition" held by the National Art Museum of China).
Plateau New Year, Oil on canvas, 2009, 185x185cm (Selected for the 10th National Art Exhibition, won the Shaanxi Provincial Award).
08 Ancient Spring Morning 2, 2008, Oil on Canvas, 65x81cm (Selected for "Advocating Green Life-China Forestry Exhibition" in 2009).
Northern Shaanxi New Year's Month No. 4, Oil Painting, 46, 53cm (2010 Selected for "Research and Transcendence--The Second Chinese Small Oil Painting Exhibition".)
Spring Snow on Longyuan, 2012, Oil on canvas, 110, 110cm (selected for the collection of the London Olympic Games Organizing Committee).
Spring Snow 2, 2010, Oil on canvas, 91 182cm (Invited works to participate in the "Plateau-Plateau 2nd Western China Art Exhibition Oil Painting Annual Exhibition".)
Plugging the Willows, Oil on canvas, 1988, 193x360cm
Ancient Plateau, Oil on canvas, 1989, 333×45.5cm (selected for the "First Landscape Oil Painting Invitational Exhibition in China", published "Fine Arts" and "Chinese Oil Painting").
Xunyang Han River, 1980, Oil on cardboard, 31, 27cm
Window, 1986, Cloth on oil painting, 77, 64cm (selected for the "Chinese Oil Painting Biennale" in Guangzhou).
*: Western Oil Painting Art Center).
Artist Profile
Pan Xiaodong,Professor and doctoral supervisor of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts, professor and master supervisor of Yunnan University and Xijing University. He is a member of the Chinese Artists Association, a director of the China Oil Painting Society, an honorary chairman of the Chinese Painting and Calligraphy Society, a director of the Chinese Painters Association, a vice president of the Shaanxi Oil Painting Society, a member of the Art Committee of the Shaanxi Artists Association, and a first-class evaluation expert of the Degree Center of the Ministry of Education. He graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in 1979 and has been teaching since then. In 1988, he graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts with a master's degree. From 2000 to 2014, he served as the director of the Oil Painting Department of Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts and a member of the 10th Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
His works have won the "Northwest Five Provinces Art Exhibition", "The Second National Teachers' Excellent Art Exhibition", and the "China Art Exhibition" Excellence Award of the Ministry of Culture; The work was selected for the first place.
The 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th National Art Exhibitions, the 3rd China Oil Painting Exhibition and other major exhibitions at home and abroad; Hundreds of works have been published in "People's **" Fine Arts, "Art Research" and various large-scale Chinese painting collections. He has published more than 30 professional academic articles such as "Dialogue with Nature". He has published 17 personal albums and monographs: "Famous Masterpieces - Pan Xiaodong Oil Painting Landscape Collection", "Pan Xiaodong Oil Painting Collection", "Pan Xiaodong Ink Painting Collection", etc. In 2013, the Chinese painting "Early Summer in Northern Shaanxi" won the Excellence Award of the 2nd Western China Chinese Painting Annual Exhibition of "Plateau-Plateau", and was collected by the Shaanxi Provincial Museum of Fine Arts. In 2015, the Chinese painting "Mid-Autumn Festival 5 in Northern Shaanxi" won the Excellence Award of the 5th Western China Chinese Painting Annual Exhibition of "Plateau-Plateau".